


Deter(mination)

by Pacifica



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: ? - Freeform, Breaking the Fourth Wall, Canon Compliant, Gen, Gender-Neutral Pronouns, Introspection, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-26
Updated: 2015-10-26
Packaged: 2018-04-28 06:15:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 935
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5080840
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pacifica/pseuds/Pacifica
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The vaguely remembered scales don’t seem to tilt in his favor, and Sans is pretty sure that, for all he lacks in external muscle and sinew, he should hold a little more weight than some small slip of a child. He’s got a pretty big backbone.</p><p>A thick skull, too.</p><p>And a really tiny brain, if he’s even got one.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Deter(mination)

**Author's Note:**

> Bitty protag has been written in gender neutral terms; please feel free to swap your preferred pronouns in as you read along.

 

**[[Copious spoilers for all runs;[also huge thanks to this neat (and spoilerific) theory](https://www.reddit.com/r/Undertale/comments/3luliw/major_spoilers_analysisspeculation_regarding_sans/)]]**

 

* * *

 

 

_I don’t know why know why,_

_I simply know that I I I,_

_I often repeat repeat myself,_

_I often repeat repeat._

 

* * *

 

 

The kid’s maybe ten, tops. And that shouldn’t matter, all things considered, but it does.

It does, because he’s pretty sure he vaguely remembers all the times he’s felt remorse (and all the times he hasn’t), standing over the same kid’s lifeless corpse a hundred times over. It does, because for every one time he vaguely remembers winning (winning _what_ , is the real question), there’s vaguely a thousand times that he _hasn’t_ , and then some.

The vaguely remembered scales don’t seem to tilt in his favor, and Sans is pretty sure that, for all he lacks in external muscle and sinew, he should hold a little more weight than some small slip of a child. He’s got a pretty big backbone.

Must have, to keep walking the same, vaguely remembered blood-stained path. A thick skull, too.

And a really tiny brain, if he’s even got one. But that’s what he gets for making promises. Sans can never seem to keep them for long

It’s almost like a loop-de-loop of all his worst qualities, laid bare time and time again. Break this (she’s dead, anyway), kill that (even if it always comes back). Talk a lot (deter). Offer a vaguely remembered meal (determine), some bad jokes (determinate).

Some good friends.

 

 **D** **e** t e r m i n a t i o n.

 

 **E x** t e r m i n a t i o n.

 

(Is there a difference?)

 

Is there a difference? He vaguely remembers fighting. He vaguely remembers befriending. He vaguely remembers a lot of damn things, a lot more than people gave him credit for, back at the start.

Now? Now they know, watching him throw his weight around to rattle a few bones; smiling off into the distance, just to rattle _their bones._ Not too fair, to keep pulling a kid into this. Not too fair, to keep pulling everyone else into it, either.

Sans gets it. You’re, uh… _determined._ Frisk’s determined. Whatever it is that hides behind a thousand different names that don’t belong to it is determined.

Sans is lazy. Sans is flagging. Sans is indolent. Something probably crawled into his skull one day and scratched _lazybones_ over his eye sockets, just so he could look at the words every night through gleaming flashes of orange and blue that make the inside of his head look like a carved out pumpkin with a strobe light dropped inside, just to see what happened.

Most things happened _just to see what happened._ Over and over again.

Kid’s walking down the snowy pathways, again. He used to snap that branch for the laughs, but now it just feels routine. Just a role. Just an action. Expected. Sans doesn’t let himself wonder what it would be like, if one day he just. Didn’t do it.

They’d freak out, he reckons. Because the only ones who are allowed to break the mold are them. Except they don’t; they just don’t know it. They’re _determined,_ the type of people who won’t EVER be happy. Not until they’ve uncovered it all. Every nook, every cranny. Every little secret.

Suppose they do, though. Suppose they stop.

He supposes that everything else would stop with ‘em. Instantaneous. Living and breathing and _determined_ one moment, gone the next. They wouldn’t even know.

Thoughts like that make it hard to give it his all, trudging through the snow towards a kid who can’t be more than ten, small slip of a body not even close to covered enough for this kind of exposure to the weather. They’re shaking.

Could just be the weather. That’s certainly been the case before. Vaguely, Sans remembers that it was that one thing that made up his mind. The shaking. Could be the weather. Could be fear. But he slips his hand into his pocket and lightly grips his whoopie cushion since...hey.

Why not?

The kid gets precious few moments in their approximately eight hour journey where they’re actually treated like a kid. Sans would feel sorry for them, if he didn’t vaguely remember the sun. Or vaguely feel his brother’s scarf clenched in his fist.

Frisk, or whatever name it’s going by, stops at the barrier. Sans still doesn’t get why. It’s pretty obvious that the bars are wide enough for a kid to sleep through, but still, they stop. He vaguely remembers dramatic tension.

He vaguely remembers finding the concept fun, for a while.

“Human.” He says, and the shivering intensifies. Sans vaguely remembers never being certain as to exactly why, not until the kid turned around. “Don’t you know how to greet a new pal?”

Do they vaguely remember, too? Do they vaguely know that the _newness_ to his statement is vaguely stale by now, tone vaguely flat with vague monotony? Sans vaguely remembers never being certain as to which, not until the kid turned around.

“Turn around and shake my hand.”

Sans vaguely remembers a lot of things. He vaguely remembers feeling a sense of trepidation. Or resignation. Even _determination,_ and **extermination.** He vaguely remembers every occasion that led to the kid being in for a bad time.

As the kid starts to turn, tiny sneakers scuffing against the icy ground, he kind of hopes that you’ll let them both be in for a good time, for once.

 

Whether or not there’s any point to it, he vaguely remembers, has yet to be determined.


End file.
